


Golden

by Val_Creative



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Anime-based, Dream Sequence, Early Work, F/M, Romantic Friendship, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-07
Updated: 2013-09-07
Packaged: 2017-12-25 20:51:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/957474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Val_Creative/pseuds/Val_Creative
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He had expected the feeling of shattered ribs, guts, and not the warmth of another human being falling against him.  /Royai.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Golden

*

 

What course of action should there be? When a subordinate blatantly disregarded an order, Roy Mustang had every right to stomp and fume, to duel out the appropriate punishment he saw fit. But how was he supposed to do that when his subordinate was unconscious?

Daylight swallowed every corner of the tiny room. Scorching white blinded his weary eyes accustomed to the semi-darkness most buildings kept, blinking back spots in his vision to settle upon a lump swathed in also blinding sheets. Cream yellow, normally held firmly to the scalp, freely spilt out on the sterile pillow. Silky locks strung color of pearl around her thin, ashen face.

In spite of his drowsiness, the high temperature the glowing room created was _not_ helping. His hardening eyes traveled down from Riza's head automatically to the only uncovered limb sticking out of her sheets. Her right arm unceremoniously flung out her side taped to an IV. His assistant had lost a lot of blood.

Quietly, Roy slid off his heavy trench coat, folding it in his arms and placing it on the end of the mattress.

He seated himself in the chair beside her. The door shut behind him so that no one would disturb his private visit.

Quite deliberately, his hand slipped around her cool wrist, savoring the wonderful guarantee of a pulse, sliding upward to have his fingers press against her insistently.

So fragile. So not… _her_.

They had caught a spy red-handed in Central several days earlier, resulting in his unit facing down the mole in the middle of a busy military cafeteria of all places. Shots came from everywhere; literally anything within range had been a target. He had stopped plenty of bullets, reducing them to chars when they got too close to some of his men, but cared not for his own safety.

Someone had.

He had expected the feeling of shattered ribs, guts, and not the warmth of another human being falling against him.

Riza crumpled forward to take the hit only after getting the bastard straight between the eyebrows. She took it right in the chest. Her head lolled onto his shoulder, blood specks decorating the edge of her cheek (whether they were her own or not). His gloved thumb smearing maroon as he had half-caught her in an awkward embrace to him.

As soon as the bullet ripped into her flesh, chaos flew on all sides. The traitor's corpse had been dragged away and the doctors cowering beneath the cafeteria's tables crawled out gravely to attend to the fainted woman in Roy Mustang's arms.

She had tried her hardest to stay awake, they assured.

It didn't matter if Riza had lost control of her body, tough to imagine any loss of control knowing her infamous stern reputation; she had disobeyed his direct order.

The hand now cradling her slender fingers loosely decided to intertwine them and gripped harshly without meaning to, not that her hand would respond.

 

_'I told you to take care of yourself…..'_

Angrily, her superior lifted her arm a moment to close his other hand around theirs entangled.

 

_'Not me.'_

Drowsy eyelids slipped shut, the back of Roy's head softly tilted back. Still clutching her, he succumbed to a sort of weightless dream. Somewhere between paralysis and actuality. He refused to let another person he loved die without his permission.

 

*

 

_From the corner of his attentive eye, Roy saw her silently reach for her gun belt._

_Without thinking on it, an offhanded comedic sigh pushed through his lips loudly . Her superior elbowed his card house he had been working on for the two hours_ before _she got in to a haphazard mess on his disregarded paperwork._

_Her hand did not remove itself from her waist._

_"Sir. . ."_

_Flashing an easy grin in her general direction, staring Riza Hawkeye straight in the face and shuffling his paperwork into a neat little pile (rather difficult with the hefty amount he had been putting off)... tRoy held up his pen in compliance._

_As fair warning, the_ click _of the safety went off._

**_BANG-BANG_ BANG**

_Both heads in Colonel Mustang's office jerked up to the implacable sound pounding._

_A First Lieutenant running in through the doorway ,panting and beet red. Forgetting to salute, something they believed was unimportant-- in part being unsettled by the haunt in the man's rapidly blinking gaze held on them. The Lieutenant gasped soundlessly before managing to choke out, "Something's happened outside Central….!"_

_Jet black eyes met with sienna brown. Synchronously reading each other's actions, both officers hurried out into the hallway to keep up with the stumbling and heaving man._

_Crisp night air burned their lungs, the precious ability being stolen as the lone scene neared._

_Just past one of the phone booths, another First Lieutenant knelt down on the sidewalk, busy taking off his military coat and pressing it into the torso of the figure lying hidden in the shadows to notice more arrivals. In the weak light, Roy could pick out how the cloth folded to the stature, the dark hairs dusting his chin. The victim definitely male. Bullet wound, probably. A good quantity of blood pooling around them… more of less, least likely chance of survival._

_They were fuzzy, programmed judgments. They were cold and harsh chipped into Roy's mind from years of being in the military, viewing merciless killings and being the cause of them himself. By then, nothing could shock him._

_A noisy_ crunch! _came out from underneath his boot._

_Rims of thin metal glinted furiously on the concrete, thousands of tiny fragments…sharp glass around a twisted pair of glasses._

_**"General!"** _

_The call came from the officer Kinsley kneeling, gesturing to him only feet away with some urgency. His throat closed._

_Before panic could set in, a strong palm jammed into his shoulder and threw his chest forward. Riza repeated the action, this time keeping a firm clasp on his coat and letting him walk on his own. Thankful for her assistance… why he had allowed himself to hesitate in front of those below him of all things??…. he went to aid the bleeding man._

_"What happened he—" Mouth snapped shut._

_Hawkeye's composure shrank slightly. She tried to grab the back of her superior's uniform once more, but only fisted air as his legs and gloved palms smacked onto the pavement, gravity, a raging active disbelief winning over his body._

_Eyes half-lidded. A line of red emerging from the friendly smile Maes Hughes cast. ".._ Riza _…"_

_Behind the men, knowing that they would not see her, that no one would remember her failure of self-control, a single tear quietly trickled and blemished the right side of her face._

"…Roy, I don't have time to tell—"

_Voice breaking off, Hughes shivered from a creeping iciness that his best friend couldn't feel, even with his arms wrapped around him. Roy muttered, half burying his face into the top of his head, "Use the time you have. You're not dying."_

_Someplace in the deepest part of his conscious, he knew this was a dream. That his mind was reliving what could have been... what he could have done. He had buried him_ goddamnit. _He watched this man's coffin get put six fuckin' feet under. None of this had to be real._

_Not the caress of liquid soaking to his shirt, not the real taste of bile rushing up his esophagus._

"What happened to being a realist. . .you….."

 _When he felt Hughes stiffen against him, panic came back with no reprieve. Roy pulled away to take hold his arms and shake him harshly. "Maes! Maes,_ dammit _!" He tensed his grip he had on the blood-soaked, motionless body in his lap and lost control of his voice as it echoed all the way through the now deserted avenue._

 _"You can't do this to me! Do you hear me!_   Who did this to you? _**TELL ME**!"_

_Preparing to scream out his aggravation, alone, he beat his fists against the chest of his deceased friend and jerked back, wide-eyed. In his place, Riza Hawkeye glared up at him on the ground. With one steady hand, she pressed a black gun to his upper lip._

_"Would you do the same for me, Sir?"_

_Sir. . .?_

 

*

 

Hotter then… fire right behind his eye sockets.

A sickeningly tempting burn, itching to be released, a dangerous monster wishing him to reveal…emotion. Maybe even the worst type to experience… _sorrow_.

"Sir."

Erasing the stupor, ultimately it was dread that yanked him awake. Sitting up in her cot, with a strand of hair falling over her left eye, Riza asked once more blandly, "Sir, as much as I appreciate the visit, I must ask you to return my hand before you bruise it anymore."

He practically shoved it back at her, scooting his chair a few inches away from the bed, and turned away to compose himself.

Roy rubbed under his nostrils with his forefinger, clearing his throat in a vain attempt to ignore those mental pleas for flimsy and pathetic deliverance. Better to be numb to that kind of pain. He eluded the track of restless days and squandered nights of giving way to that darkness of sentiments. All isolated in his apartment.

To tolerate that behavior, a man of his status, was not something to openly admit.

Men don't cry. Men wanting to make it big, men that would one day rank as Führer didn't pay any mind to those flaws in himself.

He was no such man. And his position, well, it could throw itself to the sharks. What he was at this point in his life, upon realizing it with age, was _human_. And he would die as every human did... a screaming, bleeding, eager death to follow every one before and after him in quality.

Becoming genuinely concerned at the oatmeal color tingeing what she could see of his face and the impression of a rattling his chest gave off, Riza pursed her mouth.

She said, mildly, "If you're going to insist on torturing yourself in my presence, at least have the decency to explain what's wrong."

"If you're going to insist on prying into my personal business, then I should at the least be able to take you out on a couple dates," he countered, smiling brightly.

Not amused at the slightest, especially in taking the care to get a good look at his glance, Riza barked out, "That's hardly the issue here-!" Startled, she stopped mid-yell at the returning pressure of a hand encasing hers.

Pleased inwardly that he got her to shut up, and completely _flustered_ to top it off, Roy said, calmly, "You disobeyed me Lieutenant. As a higher ranking officer, I should have you properly disciplined." Shaking his head in mock sadness, he clucked his tongue to the roof of his mouth after leaving a tiny kiss against one of her knuckles. "Indeed, indeed this can't be put up with. After all, if I let one beautiful inferior get away with this treason then what's stopping the other…less beautiful inferiors from making the same mistake?" 

"Is there a reason why you're saying this to me," she whispered.

"Despite what anyone else might say, my first priority is always to ensure your safety, Lieutenant. He added with a less bright grin, "I can't do that if you're willing to throw your life away for mine."

"I signed myself up to protect _you,_ Sir. I knew what I was setting myself up for."

He admitted aloud, grinning bigger, "I didn't."

Unspoken, the radiant truth finally blossomed between them, an impassive expression, and the other too sincere. Twin patches of pink stung her cheeks.

Settling down somewhat, Roy leaned frontward to somberly release her and curl an index finger under her chin, somehow understanding how much trouble he was going to be in later for all this violation of individual space. Sienna brown remained unyielding by the gentle motion.

"I asked for an assistant, thinking I could boss this person around to feel superior and hopefully they wouldn't care with what I did with my time. I didn't get what I wanted. And I never expected to care this much for someone in my life. Firing you wouldn't protect you from all the evil of this world," at the possibility of a _firing_ her eyebrows twitched in astonishment, "so I'll just have to trust you."

Taking her absolute silence as agreement (he would never know what she truly thought), Roy stroked her skin thoughtfully with the side of his finger before withdrawing.

"I do have some good news: I've already made up my mind on your discipline. If you feel that it doesn't fit the crime, I will respect your rebuttal," a mischievous sparkle in midnight eyes, daring her.

Suppressing the identical upwards tug on her lips mimicking his, she humored him.

 

  
*


End file.
